Devil in the Machine
by Somewhere Wandering
Summary: For centuries the Devil's Machine has lain dormant since the defeat of Giygas, but four years after the events of 199X, it has mysteriously begun to function once again. Has Giygas returned? Can he be stopped? And who will rise to stop him?
1. Prologue: A Find

CHAPTER 1 -- Prologue: A Find

Absolute terror. Looking at his surroundings and at the deep, dark passage before him, all he could feel was absolute fear.

'How did I ever find a place like this?' he thought, his mind quickly turning into a gibbering mess of sense and unintelligible thoughts. Briefly, he saw the events leading up to this moment, and tried to piece them together to see if they gave any meaning to the place he now found himself.

His name was Bill. He was a laborer on contract for a research project excavating in ancient areas of the world, to search for relics of archaeological importance. That was as far as he understood it, at least, and nobody else on the job knew much more. The higher-ups were keeping many of the details hushed, compensating by paying the workers an almost obscene amount of money simply to dig holes. Very deep holes, in this case, but holes nonetheless.

For the past six months, he and his co-workers had been digging in the midst of a barren, tangled swamp called Deep Darkness. It was madness, of course, to try drilling anything in a swamp, but the financial incentive was far too great to turn down for such trifling things as logic. They'd all been flown out to a temporary housing area constructed far into the swamp, away from the ocean where the muck was thickest from the constant flow of sea water. They'd found a prime digging site, up in some low hills that were elevated enough to escape much of the thick vegetation and spindly trees.

Everything had gone off without a hitch. Morale was high as the men piloted brand new digging equipment provided by their employers. They cut through sections of rock with speed and efficiency, stopping every so often to check the integrity of the dig and to examine the strata for anything unusual. The paychecks continued to come as the hole grew deeper and deeper. Very quickly the weak sunlight from the hazy sun overhead became insufficient to shed light on the dig, and electric lights had to be dropped down to bathe the hole in a stark white. An elevator was installed to ferry workers from the surface down into the depths.

Bill had begun his day just like any other, by waking up and having a meager just-add-water breakfast and getting into his work clothes. Men were always coming to and from the dig site, ones with soot-stained faces beaming and joking being replaced with faces of indifference ready to apply themselves to the task at hand. Bill's shift was set for the afternoon, so until then he contented himself with playing cards with the guys and making calls to his family.

"Yes, honey, I have to go. It's my shift in fifteen minutes so i've got to go get rigged up. Mmhmm. I love you too, sweetheart! Bye now."

He stepped out of the barracks style housing area and moved toward the towering machinery placed around the hole.

"Your turn now, Bill? I don't envy you... it's starting to get really claustrophobic down there."

"Yeah yeah, I know you've just got a weak stomach Fred. Hah!"

The machinery loomed closer, silhouetted against a dank gray sky.

"Don't get lost down there, I bet it's hard working an excavator when you're directionally challenged!"

"Keep your opinions to yourself, Mitch. Some of us have work to do!"

Laughing, he waved to his friends on the job and moved into a small clearing surrounded by a spiderweb of parts and gadgets. He went right to his designated storage area and started suiting up to descend. Nylon fabric creaked as he tightened a belt and harness and fastened a flashlight and tools onto it. He slipped his feet into a pair of heavy, metallic boots and clasped them tight as well. When he was completely ready, he donned the age old sign of the laborer, the construction hat.

A damp wind smothered his face and caused him to wipe sweat from his brow; he could already feel sweat soaking his shirt. His boots clomped noisily as he walked past the row of safety cones and to the elevator clinging to the side of the gargantuan hole. Looking back briefly, he said goodbye to the world above and at the press of a button descended down, down, down to the underworld of the dig.

Minutes passed as the natural light of the sun faded and was replaced by the periodic glow of light bulbs. Sound gradually began to reach him, crashing around him like a caged animal with no means of escape. He put in some earplugs as he neared the bottom, keeping the cacophony to a dull roar.

Stepping from the elevator, he was greeted by a pitted plane of machines and men. There were workers on giant futuristic looking drills, the product of a rather imaginative research company, and there were also men around the edges of the site, checking the walls or working industriously at improvised computer stations. Bill realized that he was still almost ten minutes early for his shift, and wouldn't be needed to replace the men on the drills yet. Knowing that standing in the wrong place could mean a tragic accident, Bill moved around the edge of the hole to an area that was flagged off with signs that read 'KEEP OFF - NO MACHINERY ALLOWED'. The workers all knew that when something of importance was found in a dig, it had to be sectioned off for the experts to examine at a later date. This appeared to be just such a place. Bill's curiosity itched at him, making him wonder what it was that they had found.

Looking around, he saw that all of the nearest workers were a good distance away, engrossed in their work. Feeling a sudden impulse, Bill moved past the signs and walked carefully up to the rock wall. He glanced up; it was impossible to see the top of the dig, not even a pinprick of light was visible. Coming back to the sheer rock wall before him, he leaned in close and looked carefully. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He extended a hand and felt the rugged surface through his gloves, then knocked softly. A few pebbles crumbled to the floor.

Bill stepped back in alarm. Was the wall safe? Sometimes cracks appeared from the stress of the digging tools and the vibration of the floor beneath. They had avoided any cave-ins so far, but such an event was always expected and looked for. Trying to calm his rapidly beating heart, Bill told himself there was nothing to worry about and stepped closer to look for any apparent cracks. To his dismay, a deep crevasse had appeared where he had knocked.

He bit his lip and looked back to where his co-workers continued to dig. If it turned out some structural defect was threatening the integrity of the dig, then the entire operation could be ceased for days, even weeks, while the problem was fixed. If he'd caused a crack just from knocking on the wall, he was going to get in massive trouble and most likely lose his job. His mind racing, he bent down slowly and grabbed the biggest chunk of rock that had fallen out and attempted to replace it in the crevasse.

In response to his efforts, another handful of stone crumbled away. Bill almost cursed out of frustration and sudden fear. It would be best, then, to leave it alone and just get to work. Maybe nobody would even notice that the area had been tampered with. Bill's efforts to move away were stopped when he suddenly felt a puff of stale air touch his cheek. Looking closer, he felt a small stream of air coming from the crevasse he had created. His heart leapt in astonishment. 'Could there be a tunnel this deep underground?'

Feeling a strange sense of awe and curiosity, Bill pulled another chunk of stone away from the tiny crevasse. It came off without much resistance. More pieces came away as he scrabbled to pull them off, and in only a few moments he had created a hole big enough for him to fit through. Completely enraptured in his sudden find, he donned an oxygen mask and ducked through into the hole, thoughts of discovery and adventure filling his head.

A cold sweat crept down his spine as his mind snapped back to the present, to the great opening before him that eerily resembled a threshold. Willing his feet to move, to do anything but stand still in this eternal silence, he stepped through the forbidding entrance.

The rock tunnel, he had discovered, had been immediately on a decline. The air around him swirled almost visibly as he reached to turn on his flashlight, as if no man had entered there for hundreds of thousands of years. It descended down into a pure blackness, penetrated only by the fierce white glow of the flashlight. He started walking, the steady decline bringing him further and further down. 'I wonder where this could possibly lead?' he thought.

Fear brought him back to the present, fear that grew and grew with each passing second. The floor below had changed suddenly, for no longer was he walking on stone, but on a cold, cold metal. His fevered consciousness was beyond wondering why this could be, so far below the surface. Every step he took clanked and echoed off the walls around him, rebounding angrily upon him at intruding upon this untouched hall. His flashlight came up on a wall as the hall curved slightly. The metal reflected back at him, but also absorbed a portion of the light like a soft fabric would. Like skin.

His steps had taken him further and further down, so far that he lost track of time. A few times he had considered returning, a hesitant kind of fear creeping into his curious nature. Some unknown urge kept him descending.

The end of the tunnel had broken upon him suddenly, as if he had been thrown through a window into a bizarre new world. Incomprehensibly, white dust crunched under his boots and dissipated as if muffled, the only sound in a vast sea of pure, stifling silence. He stood on a ledge in a cavern of unimaginable size, in a darkness that felt like it extended as high as the clouds and for miles in every direction before him. The floor of the ledge was some kind of white stone, pale like a corpse. It was there that the first tendrils of fear had clenched the pit of his stomach and nearly caused him to turn right around and run for his life. Inexplicably, he had moved forward.

The metallic tunnel grew more and more convoluted as curves zigged and zagged before him. A burning desire to know what lay at the end of the hall was raging within him, quickening his steps and shortening his breath. His heart was beating incredibly fast, while adrenaline sharpened his mind to a focused point. He remembered walking down the eerie white walkway with the darkness falling for unimaginable depths to either side. He remembered coming to the end of the walkway and being faced with a crevasse that looked like a tall, thin triangle, only wide enough for one person to fit through. The crevasse, he knew, was an entrance. An entrance to a place that he should not be, that no sane man would enter. Inexplicably, he knew that entering there would mean he would not come out alive. The rumblings of fear deep inside him erupted in a wave of terror.

Absolute terror.

Before him was a dead end. The walls and the floor all rose to surround something on a platform before him. His feeble light showed what appeared to be pipes laid across the ground and up over the walls before him, leading down the hallway he had just walked. Suddenly he realized that they were not pipes, but some twisted, terrifying kind of arteries. This was not just a room, it was a heart, a dried up, dead heart. Bill lifted his flashlight to look before him with his entire being quivering in fright. Where all of the veins came together, at the place where the life of this heart had once flowed to, there was an eye. A pitiless, lidless, lifeless eye.

Bill only made it as far as the top of the tunnel before he finally collapsed.

-----

Somewhere far away, an old man in a white lab coat was standing over a table scattered with sheets of paper and rolled out blueprints. A coffee cup sat half full at arms reach, long since gone cold. The man wore a pair of round glasses and had a spray of white hair ringing his bald head, and a bushy white mustache under his nose. The smell of ozone permeated the spacious laboratory of austere whites and sterile blues, sparsely furnished and hardly decorated.

He was engrossed in his work, muttering to himself and making unintelligible notations with a well worn pencil. The shriek of a telephone cut through the quietness and caused the old man to jerk his head up in annoyance. After muttering a few choice words under his breath, he called, "Jeff, would you answer that?" and craned once more over his work. The phone continued to cut the stillness with it's clamor. "Jeff! Where the blazes..." the man's voice dropped once more to self-contained ramblings.

He stood up slowly and cracked his back before moving around the metal table to where the phone rested. Picking it up, he snapped, "Yes?" A voice spoke hesitatingly through the speaker, and the old man turned quickly with wide eyes. "_What?!_ Say that again, slower." His eyes moved as if tacking off points in space, attempting to solve a sudden problem and finding it insurmountable. One hand darted out to grab the edge of the table for support, as suddenly he felt incapable of standing. "I understand. Thank you." and with that, he carefully replaced the phone on it's charger. For a few moments he simply stood there leaning on the table, trying to fathom what he had been told. "Could this truly be..." he said to himself, his eyebrows like troubled thunderheads, "Can they truly have unearthed the Devil's Machine?"


	2. Chapter 2: A Day in the Life

CHAPTER 2 --- A Day in the Life

April 22, 2001. The headstone of William A. Morel, a worker for a prominent archaeology organization, stood as a solemn monument to what he had once been. . Black clothed relatives and friends stood about sobbing quietly while a pastor recited the eulogy. His unexpected death at the Deep Darkness excavation had caused the entire project to come to a screeching halt. No word of the unfortunate laborer's death had reached the media, and the strict confidentiality of the dig remained intact. His two young children clung to their mother's legs, frightened at the sudden removal of their dad from their lives.

Shockingly, the head of the prestigious research company known as ARC, Dr. Andonuts, had come to attend the funereal services. He held a black fedora over his heart somberly and listened with an intense sadness that surprised many of the attenders. His pure white hair and mustache was like a beacon in a sea of dark, in a roiling ocean of sadness. As far as anyone knew, Dr. Andonuts had no connection with the archaeological group that had been heading the dig. Behind the weathered figure of the Doctor, wearing an indifferent expression, was his only son Jeff.

At 19 he was taller than his dad, about 5' 6", and of a lanky build. Straw blond hair fell down to thick, rounded glasses that obscured his blue eyes. His fingers tapped restlessly against the black suitcoat he'd had to wear for the occasion.

The true meaning of why an important individual such as his father was attending the funereal of a nondescript dig worker was no secret to him, and it definitely wasn't just compassion. His reasons for attending were not simply to mourn the man's death, as tragic as it was, but to contemplate the bizarre events surrounding it.

Based on the report that his father had handed him the day after Bill was found dead, there was little to form a solid hypothesis on. Bill Morel, age 34, discovered dead at the mouth of a small, previously untapped tunnel at the base of the excavation. Site was evacuated. Tunnel remains unexplored.

Unknown to the public, even the mourners at the man's closed casket funereal, ARC had acquired the corpse of Bill Morel through copious "donations" and heartfelt letters to his family. As to the cause of death, after a brief examination by top ARC doctors, Bill was determined to have died of heart failure. He had no previous symptoms, and no family members with a history of heart disease. "What could possibly cause a man's heart to just stop?" Dr. Andonuts had asked, and the doctor, looking dead level at him with the utmost seriousness, responded,

"Fear. Quite simply, this man died of fear."

It didn't take a legendary scientist to figure that something deadly lay down that unexplored tunnel. Jeff's memories were dark indeed when he recalled what lay beneath Deep Darkness, when he remembered the events of four years prior.

The irony of the excavation's location was not lost on Jeff, since he was one of the few in the world who knew of the existance of a strange prehistoric land beneath Deep Darkness known as the Lost Underworld. Had the diggers started only a few kilometers away, they would've drilled right into it. However, Jeff was in no mood for laughter at the prospect. For what lay adjacent to Deep Darkness had been what, until now, Jeff had thought only to be a dark, deserted cavern. It was there that he and his four friends had traveled four years ago, and there that they had discovered what had been required of them to save the world: to travel into that exact same location in the past to confront the greatest threat known to mankind, Giygas.

The incredible invention known as the Phase Distorter III, the brainchild of Dr. Andonuts and the reclusive tribe of Mr. Saturns, had been able to take them straight to Giygas, but not without taking a terrible risk first. Their human 'souls' had to be transferred into robot shells, since living matter was destroyed in the time traveling process. There was no guarantee that their spirits would return when the battle was ended, since the Phase Distorter III could only travel to the past, and not back. The transfer had been successful, and he and his friends had traveled back to a bizarre cavern of pure white and grey, the Cave of the Past. It was there that they had found Giygas, confronted him, and very nearly lost their lives.

'_And now...'_ thought Jeff, his eyebrows coming together in thought, _'I thought that that place would have been lost in the interminable amount of time between that battle and now. Could it really still be intact? Worse... could it be _functioning?' To a logical thinker such as Jeff, the consequences of that line of thinking were too horrifying to contemplate.

So he stood in silence, next to his father, as the pastor gave his closing remarks, and the relatives began to throw flowers into the grave. Irritated at his own train of thought, Jeff whispered to the Doctor, "Can we go now?"

Andonuts took a few moments to respond, he seemed fixed on the sight of those flowers being thrown with eyes that were filled with sadness. "I pray, Jeff..." he paused, taking a deeper look at the grave before turning to his son, "That this does not turn out to be a funereal for our world."

"Giygas?" Jeff said, though it came out as only a breath. Even today, after all this time, he was hardly able to speak the name. Andonuts nodded gravely.

"Let us return to the lab. We have some matters to attend to." An understatement. Then, as if the matter of Bill Morel were settled in his mind, he turned and walked swiftly away. Jeff had to run to catch up.

When they had walked a short distance, they came to some trees standing like sentinels over the rows of gravestones, the Doctor came to a stop and removed a small device from a pocket of his overcoat. He pointed it at the ground and activated it through a few tiny clicks. The air before them shimmered, and a machine nearly as big as the tree it sat under appeared. It was circular in shape, with an extension resembling a nose jutting out of one end, along with two painted-on eyes and whiskers. Along with the ribbon shaped antenna on top, the entire device resembled the odd looking Mr. Saturn. It was an exact copy of the device, the Phase Distorter III, that the Chosen Four had used to travel back in time, although these days it was being put to more practical uses such as easy transportation.

Andonuts opened a round door in the front and gestured for Jeff to step in. He did so, and took his spot in the cramped interior. The Doctor gave a brief look back at the black-clad crowd, then stepped in and pulled the hatch shut. In a matter of moments, the Phase Distorter gave off a high pitched whine and seemed to pull apart in multiple directions, then vanished.

-----

In a distant corner of Eagleland, in the town of Alphed, a boy was sitting at a desk and staring at a pencil.

He was not particularly impressive to look at, with rumpled brown hair and brown eyes, and a build that suggested only marginal interest in athletics. He sat at his desk at Alphed High, half listening to the History lecture, mostly staring intently at his writing utensil.

His classmates were all steadfastly ignoring him, as they had done the entire time this particular boy had been in their class. There had never been a time when he hadn't been an outsider; to the other guys, he was too different to merit any kind of friendship. To the girls, he was antisocial and just plain weird.

"Dustin, perhaps you can enlighten us." the teacher said, looking impassively from the white board to where the boy sat.

Without looking up from his desk, Dustin replied, "October 14, 1066. It was a decisive victory for the Normans." The teacher blinked once or twice in shock. He should have gotten used to how the boy never seemed to be paying attention, but always answered every question correctly. The teacher shrugged it off then said shortly,

"That's correct. Now..."

Dustin's excellent grades didn't exactly endear him to his classmates either.

At the moment, Dustin couldn't have cared less for them or for the lecture. He only stared at his pencil like he would burn a hole through it just with his eyes. '_I know I did this earlier. I know I did._' he repeated to himself for what had to be the fiftieth time. Pushing the thoughts from his mind, he tried his best to stay completely calm. The pencil, however, continued to rest on the desk inanimately. Dustin continued to stare. After a few moments of blanking out his thoughts, the pencil twitched.

Leaning in closer, Dustin tried to quell the surge of emotion inside and struggled to keep thoughts from entering his mind. The pencil twitched once more, then picked itself up slowly off the desk, moving to balance on it's point.

"Dustin, since you seem to be quite knowledgeable on the Battle of Hastings-"

The teacher's sudden interruption caused the pencil to clatter noisily to the desk to roll off and bounce noisily on the ground. Snickers swept throughout the room, and Dustin brought his brown eyes up to the teacher with a flash of annoyance. He answered the question without a second thought and reached down to pick up his pencil, his mind in disarray once more.

Later that day, his locker closed with an overly loud slam that was drowned by the clamor of school letting out. Dustin sighed to himself, then pushed into the crowd to try and make his way to the exit. The crowd surged around him in a chorus of laughter and raised voices, filling the halls with the oppressive heat of clustered bodies. Eventually the students emptied out into a small parking lot where their rides waited, or where some kids such as Dustin would start their walk home.

The town of Alphed was a quiet, unassuming suburb in a lightly forested area of Eagleland. It had a drug store, a hotel, a few restaurants, but nothing truly impressive to draw tourists. This is exactly how the citizens of Alphed liked it. For the most part, Alphedians enjoyed keeping to themselves.

Dustin hefted his backpack and began to walk out of the schoolyard and onto a nearby sidewalk. The streets were always kept in top condition, and the sidewalks were always kept immaculately clean: to the point that Dustin started to feel like he was in some kind of overblown sitcom. He couldn't help but sigh to himself and look up at the clouds. Trying to recall the past few years of his life, everything was one huge blur. Nothing stood out from the haze of class after boring class, the aced tests, the uninteresting people. Once or twice he had involuntarily tried to reach out and find some kind of companionship, and had been completely disgusted at what he found: mediocrity. All around him were people whom he knew for a fact aspired to nothing more than a nine to five job, three square meals a day, marriage, and kids. Every one of them took what came to them and didn't put forth an ounce more effort than what was required to be average, or even below average.

"You have a special gift, Dustin." one of his teachers had tried to tell him. Seeing his indifference, they all gave up in the end. Continuing the way back home, he passed the bakery without so much as a glance.

'_Why, I wonder?_' he thought, watching the cars zip past the calm right angles of buildings and putter quietly under the blinking signals. It was a question he often lobbied to the powers that be, one that he never got an answer for. He wondered why he, of all the people surrounding him, why he alone wanted more than what was given to him. He wondered why, when the world gave him his portion, that when he asked for more all he got was disapproving stares. He wondered why being better than his peers was grounds for being shunned.

As he typically did, Dustin crumpled up all these concerns and tossed them into the wastebasket of his mind. Nothing good ever came of thinking too hard. Releasing another despondent sigh, Dustin turned a corner at the movie theater and continued his walk.

The only thing that had occurred recently that was of any interest to him was the surfacing of a peculiar ability inside of him that had cropped up unexpectedly. It had happened the week before, when Dustin had been eating with his parents at the dinner table. His Dad had been prattling on about some news story like he always did, and Mom had been acting like she was listening avidly like she always did. He himself had been picking at the dish before him, not too interested in eating, when he had looked at the salt shaker across the table from him. Amusedly, he thought how funny it would be if the salt shaker tipped over and spilled salt all over his Dad's lap. He wasn't surprised when it didn't happen immediately. He was surprised when, after a few more seconds of staring at the salt shaker, it had begun to lift off the table.

Just the shock of seeing the shaker in midair without anything holding it up was enough for Dustin to jerk back in his seat, and right as he did the salt shaker fell back to the table, upending itself and spilling all over his father's lap.

"Whoah now!" his Dad had yelled, jumping out of his chair. "What the blazes? I swear that shaker just _assaulted_ me, hah!" That was Dad all over; something strange or sudden happens and he's either laughing about it or cracking a joke over it. Mom had laughed right along and fixed the salt shaker, while Dustin had laughed nervously to try and seem normal. In reality, his heart had been pounding out of his chest. Had it really just lifted off the table all by itself? Had _he_ really been the one to make it happen?

Thinking it must have been some crazy coincidence, or a trick of the eyes, he had shoved it off into a mental corner and continued with his schoolwork. Then, remembering the event again a few days later, he had tried a similar feat with a pencil. To his slight dismay, he couldn't move it an inch. He had sat at his desk in his room staring at a pencil for over an hour, with no results whatsoever. Frustrated, he had shoved his chair back to stand up, and the pencil had shot off his desk and buried itself in his wall. That was what had really clinched it in his mind; he possessed some sort of strange psychic power.

Dustin was sixteen. Since he hadn't shown any evidence of psychic ability before now, he figured that it had something to do with aging and his mental development. He'd scanned some pages on the internet to try and discover more, but nothing was forthcoming about when these things developed, or what sort of things he would be able to do. A few links brought him to fan pages for the Chosen Four, that group of kids who had saved the world from the alien invasion four years ago. Dustin knew enough about them, he'd had to endure more than one stuffy lecture on the events of the War with Giygas, to know that three of the four controlled the mysterious power called PSI. However, to Dustin's mind, there had to be thousands of people with psychic powers who were unable to tap into PSI, chances were he was among them.

All of these thoughts about psychics had caused him to make another try at controlling his newfound ability during class, and it had looked as if he had been about to succeed. It was exciting to think that he was developing this kind of paranormal ability, but his emotions faded every time he realized that he had nowhere to go with them, and no real use for floating salt shakers.

At length, the sidewalk ended and Dustin walked onto a dirt path hedged by grass and a few flowering trees. His family lived in a small house in the rural suburbia surrounding Alphed, away from the hustle and bustle of the main area of town. '_At least I get some exercise walking all this way every day_' he mused, smirking. A dog started barking noisily in a nearby yard as he passed, but it failed to phase the thick shield of cynicism surrounding the boy. His house came into view, a square two-story with light blue siding and a black tile roof, and after unlocking the door and re-depositing the key in his pocket, he went inside.

The house was quiet, save for the gentle hum of the refrigerator and air conditioning. Around him were the multitudinous knick-knacks that always denoted a place of long-time residence: a cracked vase that functioned as an umbrella stand, a shelf with pictures of Dustin when he was younger along with an embarrassingly deformed clay figure of his mom he had made in first grade, a wooden sign over the stove that read "Master at Work", a tiny fountain with a ceramic frog sitting in it on the counter in the kitchen. The colors were warm and friendly, with a mustard yellow covering the walls of the dining area and sepia tones all over the living room. It was home, from the carpeted steps leading to the second floor to the soft white of the inset ceiling lights.

The significance had been lost on Dustin from having to live there every day of his life. He threw his backpack full of books into a corner under the coat hangers and trotted upstairs. His room was the first at the top, and he walked right in, flipping on the light as he went.

It could be the room of any sixteen year old boy, with it's music posters and overflowing closet, it's cluttered computer desk and unmade bed. As part of the routine he repeated every single day, Dustin stripped off his school uniform and grabbed some jeans off the back of his desk chair, adding a black t-shirt moments later. Thus attired in more comfortable wear, he made his way downstairs and

walked into the kitchen. A note was taped to the refrigerator, delineating all the food that his Mom had cooked and frozen for him. He ignored it and pulled the refrigerator open, grabbing the first edible thing that came into view and throwing it into the microwave. As the green numbers on it's face started counting down, Dustin briefly considered how much fun his parents were having at the moment.

At the beginning of the week, after months of planning, his Mom and Dad had gone on an extended vacation at the beach resorts of Summers, leaving Dustin all to himself for more than a month. Mom had given him a hundred extra hugs to try and make up for her absence to come, and had cooked all his favorite meals and frozen them so he could heat them up whenever he wished. The house was mercifully quiet without his Dad's boisterous voice filling it, and Dustin was still reveling in the tranquility. He hoped that they had so much fun in the sun that they would extend their vacation yet another month and leave him be just a little longer.

The microwave beeped at him, and Dustin reached for a fork before pulling the plate out and moving quickly into the living room. His haste wasn't out of expectation or excitement, but merely the anticipation of lapsing into the void of doing nothing for another few hours, possibly escaping the drudgery that filled his everyday life. He clicked the TV on as he sat down on the big leather couch facing it and channel surfed briefly before settling on some derivative shoot-em'-up action movie. He was utterly disinterested in the content, but chose to get absorbed in it anyway, periodically shoving some food into his mouth and not even checking to see what it was he was eating. Deciding it needed some salt, he got up and took the salt shaker off the table and brought it back into the living room. After lazily seasoning his food, he resumed watching the events onscreen.

Minutes later, when the meal was finished, he laid the plate aside and stretched out languidly. '_I don't suppose there's much else more for me to do._' he thought, relaxing and continuing to watch the movie. He wasn't truly into it, though, for his gaze drifted slowly from the screen to the salt shaker now sitting on the floor. Propping his head up on an arm, Dustin observed the salt shaker and began to stare at it while gunshots and dialogue chattered over him. '_Now don't disappoint me... I want to see a repeat performance. I know I can do it again._'


	3. Chapter 3: An Arrival

**Author's Note** - Slightly revised from the original draft as of 6/18/07

CHAPTER 3 --- An Arrival

Dr. Andonuts and Jeff stood over the metal worktable looking like two grim sentinels at watch over a doomed city. Blueprints and documents were strewn about, along with a few drained styrofoam cups of coffee. It was only the night after the funeral, but dark rings were already starting to line Jeff's eyes beneath his glasses, and the Doctor looked almost to have aged overnight. His wrinkles appeared more like deep grooves, sketching his face into a picture of discontent. Both Jeff and the Doctor had assumed slightly wrinkled lab coats.

"There's nothing conclusive, even after all the research we've looked at." said Jeff, removing his glasses and rubbing his nose. He quickly replaced them and continued, "As much as I hate to say it, somebody is going to have to go down there and take a look around."

Andonuts looked up at his son quickly. "Jeff, surely you cannot return to that place after the ordeal you suffered there!" The young genius' face remained implacable.

"There might be no other way. We have to get a scientific analysis as to whether this is really the vessel of Giygas or not. We still don't even know exactly _what_ that poor dig worker saw that scared him so."

"Jeff, you know that it could be incredibly dangerous. We could just as easily send a research team down there to do an investigation-"

"But if it really is what we hypothesize it is, then nobody is better qualified to examine it than me."

Nodding his unwilling assent, Andonuts unconsciously began to pace. "It's not something I can fully endorse, but as always your logic is showing through my fuddy-duddy emotions, my son." Despite the haggard cast of his face, the Doctor smiled. "If you do go, you know that I will be behind you one-hundred percent."

Jeff returned the smile with his own. "Thank you, dad. And besides... i've perfected a few of my battle machines in the past four years that i've had no chance to experiment with. If I were to encounter anything dangerous, at least I would be fully prepared." He looked out a nearby window and said wistfully, "If only I had time to complete my project over at the abandoned Stonehenge base... but that's impossible, now. We have to get down to that dig with the utmost haste."

Andonuts moved to a nearby storage cabinet and began to rifle through a stack of papers. "You can use the Sky Runner to get there, I have the programming around here somewhere that you'll need to enter the directions, and of course you will need some protective equipment as well, and-"

"Dad." said Jeff, grinning and hefting a rather deadly looking piece of equipment, "I'm nineteen years old. I can definitely take care of myself."

Andonuts turned and looked fully at Jeff, who stood there across the room holding a weapon that looked like an assault rifle with a two liter soda bottle attached to the muzzle, his stance filled with confidence. The Doctor's face softened, and he said, "Jeff, my boy, you really have grown. It's sentimental, I suppose, but it seems like such a short time ago that you were just five years old at Snow Wood. I wish I had been there to see you grow up... to watch you put together your first invention, or to take your first steps, or make your first A on your report card..." A tear came to one of his eyes, and he swiftly wiped it away. Jeff looked touched, and he carefully placed the weapon on the table before moving over to his father and giving him a stiff embrace. "Jeff," said the Doctor quietly, his voice cracking slightly from the tears, "you have made me proud."

Jeff let the moment simmer. Times like these had been few and far between since he had been reunited with his dad four years ago, considering all the frenetic research and experimentation they had conducted with the quirky Mr. Saturns, along with their own private research here. To a person like Jeff who was normally a straight-laced, logical thinker, forming a connection with a dad who had been absent for his entire childhood had been difficult. Yet, Jeff had discovered that no span of time could break that inherent bond between a father and son. There were still moments like this when their similarities became crystal clear, when the bond was strongest.

"You can put away the coordinates, dad. I'm going to go meet someone who definitely doesn't need a dusty old invention like the Sky Runner." Jeff pulled back and smiled slightly once again. "If everything is in order, then he should still be living in Onett. All I have to do is go and find him-"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Jeff." said a voice from the doorway. Both Jeff and the Doctor nearly jumped out of their skin and turned toward the voice. Jeff's eyebrows seemed to jump off the top of his head as he looked closer, dumbfounded. The stranger chuckled slightly and said, "You haven't changed a bit, have you?"

A brilliant smile lit up Jeff's features as he scrabbled around the table to greet the newcomer. He laughed, beside himself with joy; the last person he had expected to show up had defied expectations yet again.

-----

In a distant corner of Eagleland, near the town of Sigburg, a girl sat and stared at a stone.

The stone was just a normal gray rock, with nothing at all special about it. In a perfect circle around the rock, with just a small area of grass inbetween, blue mushrooms were growing. To the girl, it seemed like a faint hazy light came from the toadstools and bathed the tiny valley in soft shades. When she watched it for long enough, she started to feel like a part of the scenery, like she herself was growing out of the ground and feeding off that sustaining light. It was the only place she could come to find peace with the way things had been recently. Anywhere else she went had the faint hum of traffic, or crowded streets full of people, or the scream of airplanes overhead for as far as she could walk. This vale and it's ring of odd mushrooms gave her a place to come to feel safe, and secluded from the world. The way the sun slanted into the alcove, it only had natural light for a few hours of the day. The rest of the time it was just Celeste and the faintly shimmering mushrooms.

She was a pretty girl, by most standards, though some would say that she was a little too thin in the face, that her nose was a little too long, or that her arms were a little too gangly for her slight body. Her wild black hair was half braided into a ponytail in the back, while the rest fell down around her shoulders in waves. Hazel eyes the color of amber and emerald were half lidded as she sat forward on her arms, drifting between daydreams and hazy reality.

Sighing in contentment, she rolled off the mossy log she had been sitting on and landed on her back. Completely relaxed, she closed her eyes and just daydreamed. She wondered if what her father was doing at work, if he was happy. She wondered if her sister was still at school, where Celeste was supposed to be. Obligations didn't seem all that important when she came to the vale. A slight breeze drifted down into the small valley, pulling at the edges of her brown peasant skirt and green longsleeve shirt. There was nowhere else in the world that Celeste would rather have been at that moment. Sigburg was far away. The school was far away. Her family was far away, and every last one of her troubles was far, far away.

In the quiet glow of the toadstool ring, the girl named Celeste drifted off into dreamless sleep.

-----

The boy standing in the doorway of the Andonuts Laboratory was obviously dressed for travel, with threadbare jeans and well worn sneakers, a blue coat with a yellow stripe on the chest, a sturdy looking black backpack, and a red colored baseball cap on his head, the brim of which was blue.

"Ness!" cried Jeff, rushing forward and proceeding to vigorously shake the newcomer's hand. "It is truly good to see you again, friend!"

"Haha, same to you, Jeff." said Ness as he returned the handshake with a warm smile. His old friend's face was thinner than Jeff remembered it, the eyes were clearer, if it were even possible, and his entire posture simply appeared as more mature. "You're taller than I remember." said Ness.

Jeff stepped back and crossed his arms. "It has been four whole years, you know."

"Has it?" said Ness quietly, looking around at the lab with a faraway look in his eyes. "The last time we were here, we were on the way to Stonehenge to save Dr. Andonuts and the rest-" here he noticed the Doctor to one side and nodded, Andonuts nodded gravely in response to the memory.

"It's not an event I care to recall." he said, his face becoming even more weathered in the moment. Jeff remembered his own horror at finding Dr. Andonuts, along with some of their close friends, floating suspended in containment tanks deep in the enemy base.

"But at any rate, Ness! How did you come to be here just now? I swear i'd only just started talking about you when you showed up." said Jeff.

Ness closed the door to the frigid air of Winters behind him and walked further into the stuffy laboratory before responding. "You have to remember, Jeff, i've just got a sense of the right place to be." He turned his head and grinned widely at his friend, "Up until today, I was rotting away from boredom back in Onett. It's been like that, ever since I got back from our journey. The whole fame of being 'The Chosen One' and the 'Savior of Earth' started to fade after a few months... then I was just Ness the teenager again. Sure I still got looks and even the occasional autograph request, but I could barely stand just sitting in a classroom after I had traveled the world, after the raw power of the earth had gone through me in the war against Giygas." At this, he looked at one of his hands, as if remembering a lost feeling. "Four years I went through it. Four _years_, Jeff, of just being normal teenage Ness. I took off on little excursions every so often, but without Giygas' influence on the world, everywhere I went was totally safe. I mean, it's not like I want the world to be plunged into crisis like it was before, but I just wanted _something_, anything at all." He looked up at Jeff, his big brown eyes inquisitive. "Do you have any idea what I'm saying?"

"I know, Ness." said Jeff, sighing and removing his white labcoat. Underneath was a seaweed green suit, with a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. It seemed uncharacteristically sloppy for the usually rigid personality Jeff expressed. He tossed the labcoat over the back of a nearby chair and adjusted his glasses. "It's been the same here. For a while it was interesting enough to perform experiments with the Mr. Saturns, but even their interesting nature started to grate on the nerves after long enough. When we returned to seclusion here at the lab, it was even worse. My father and I have created some fascinating new inventions since our time here. We even went so far as to found a research corporation we deemed ARC, the Andonuts Research Company. It's been rapidly expanding ever since it's inception two years ago. However, even in the light of all of this, after an adventure such as you and I experienced, after all that happened since I crash landed the Sky Runner into the graveyard in Threed, it was hard to adjust to a 'normal' life." He looked into Ness' eyes. "I know exactly what you mean."

"However..." said Andonuts, "This still does not explain why you came here, Ness."

Ness nodded and linked his hands behind his head. "Well, I was sitting an reminiscing on old times one lazy afternoon, and all of a sudden I had this urge to come and visit you, Jeff. I couldn't explain it or rationalize it in my mind, but in light of my extreme boredom I decided I would stop by." He looked slowly from Andonuts over to Jeff. 'Stop by' was an interesting turn of phrase, given the circumstances; Onett was more than a hundred miles from the frigid hills of Winters. One of the many psychic powers Ness had developed had been the power to teleport across vast distances in mere seconds. "Judging by your reaction, I seemed to have come at a good time."

Instantly, Jeff's expression hardened. "I don't believe you could call the situation 'good'."

Ness quickly dropped his jovial outlook and adopted a serious expression. Jeff was astonished at how much the old Ness had matured. "Is it..." Ness mouthed the name, but he seemed unable to speak it, out of fear that it might bring some sort of life to a long dead adversary.

"Giygas." answered Andonuts gravely. A tangible pall of tension fell on the room as the three men looked at the floor for a moment.

It was a few moments before Ness was able to speak. "How is it possible?"

The Doctor pushed about a few of the papers strewn messily on the metallic table before picking up one document in particular and handing it across to Ness. His eyes scanned the page for a moment, and in only a few moments he understood. "Deep Darkness... far beneath the ground... no, it couldn't be. Tell me it's not what I think it is."

"The only thing it logically could be. The remains of the Cave of the Past." said Jeff in a tone of utmost seriousness, and masked pain. Ness could only close his eyes and slump forward to support himself by one arm on the table. Jeff watched carefully his close friend's expression of pain at the memory of that place. In his heart, Jeff felt that same pain that he felt he could never recover from. It returned every time he remembered the nature of Giygas, the waves of pure evil that had surrounded them during the conflict, the hate against all living things, the attacks that came from every direction without warning or explanation. It had been a time of total hopelessness, when all of the effort they had put into reaching that point had seemed like nothing in the face of Giygas' unimaginable power. It had only been divine intervention that had pulled them from the brink of death and destroyed the universal cosmic destroyer in turn.

Even Ness' reaction was different from what it would've been years ago. He had more emotions now, past the sheer determination Jeff had seen at every moment during their journey. The old Ness would never have stopped long enough to let the situation get to him. At length, Ness straightened up and examined the paper again. "But we still don't know for sure, do we? This report says that the site was abandoned, and nobody has tried to explore it yet."

"Exactly." said Jeff. "I wanted to find you, Ness, since you and I would be the most capable of anyone alive to explore that abandoned tunnel. If we went to investigate, we would be able to make a conclusive decision as to whether what remains there is anything we should be worried about."

"You mean the Devil's Machine." said Ness.

"That's right." Jeff replied. They both remembered in stark detail the shock they had felt when, at the end of everything, at the climax of their journey, none other than the fat face of Pokey Minch had appeared. Pokey had been Ness' neighbor and friend for a time, until the fateful events of 1997 launched Ness into an adventure that eventually brought him worldwide fame. Seeing Ness going about the process of attaining this grandeur was too much for Pokey's outrageously inflated ego. From the moment that the messenger from the future had told Ness he was to be the Chosen One, Pokey had done everything possible to try and get in Ness' way by taking the side of every major enemy that Ness would encounter. One by one Ness had defeated them, and displaced Pokey from his seat of power. With each encounter, Pokey's hate had grown, until he was hardly even human anymore. Giygas' corrupting influence had so taken over Pokey's mind that he had gone as far as to steal the prototype Phase Distorter and, though some means still unknown, had traveled to the past to join with Giygas.

It had been there that Pokey had fought the four of them alongside Giygas who, at the time, was in the form of a great lidless eye. It was shortly after the battle began that Pokey asked them all if they wanted to see Giygas' "true form". What he had said after that had remained a mystery, "So do you want me to turn off the Devil's Machine? Well, prepare to be amazed!" It was after that moment that the real nightmare had begun.

"The Devil's Machine." repeated Jeff. "We still don't know it's exact nature, but it definitely has a direct connection to Giygas and, judging by the way Pokey spoke, acted as a container for it's 'true form'. If we have an opportunity to examine it, the results could be immeasurably helpful."

"So if I understand you correctly, then we need to go to this dig site first of all. Then, if it turns out the discovery is not truly the Devils Machine, we return with clear consciences and go on living our merry lives. In the event that it really is the Devil's Machine, then we will have to examine it to see what we can find." His voice wavered toward the end of his sentence, and he coughed in an attempt to cover it up. Andonuts and Jeff had both heard it, and understood how he felt. None of them looked forward to approaching that unholy place at all. The possibility of discovery was even less appealing.

"Exactly so." said Jeff. "We will, of course, take the utmost precautions for this trip. Theoretically, however, there should be no resistance to be met." The fact of Bill Morel's sudden death was left unspoken. They would be facing whatever had driven his consciousness to such extremes that his heart had given out.

Jeff managed to crack a smile. "But Ness, why not focus on happier things? I know we've both got a lot to catch up on, and old times to reminisce. I'm sure there's something edible around here, why don't you stay the night and we can depart tomorrow?"

Ness nodded, some of the tension slipping away from his own face. "That would be great, Jeff. It's very thoughtful of you."

Though the three of them attempted to be jovial the rest of the night, the smiles remained forced, the laughter stayed at just a pitch too high, too shrill. The spectre of the job to be done was too dark to permit any sort of relaxation on their part.

Ness did not get any sleep that night.

-----

Far, far away, the figure of Celeste lay comfortably in the moss of a shaded valley under the stars, all of her cares far from her.


	4. Chapter 4: A Message Sent

CHAPTER 4 -- A Message Sent

Sunrise found a grim Jeff Andonuts belting on holstered weapons and strapping various gadgets about his person. Ness walked in from the rest area, a hastily cleared room of scattered junk and a worn looking cot, and rumpled his black hair into a less tangled cloud. The room had been covered with the evidences of many late nights of tinkering and experimenting, from the acid burns in the edges of the fabric on his makeshift bed to the bullet holes riddling the far wall. Jeff had always seemed to get his greatest inspirations at obscene hours of the morning. Rubbing his eyes wearily, the former Chosen One took his light coat from off the back of a chair and zippered it up before slipping into his shoes.

No words were passed between the companions as they readied themselves to depart. Jeff, who looked as if he had slept in his clothes, was absentmindedly running a comb through his straight blond hair when the Doctor came down from the upstairs landing. He broke the silence that had tenuously held on for the past few minutes

"You should both use the Instant Revitalizing Device before you go, undoubtedly you will want to be in top physical condition for what lies ahead." Andonuts gestured to the black and gray capsule machine resting upright along one wall. Ness recalled it dimly, he and his companions had used it on their last journey to acquire a good night's rest in just a few moments before heading for the nearby enemy base. He walked over and pried open the hatch, then stepped in and closed it behind him. Immediately the air became statically charged, and he felt the faint electric charge ripple across his skin. After only a few seconds of the machine clicking and buzzing, the hatch popped open and Ness stepped out, fully rested with only a slight tingling sensation to say for it. Jeff also stepped over, weapons and all, and used the Device as well.

The energy acquired from their "rest" showed in their eyes as they looked briefly at each other and smiled. It was just like old times, the two of them heading off on an adventure into the unknown. Andonuts looked between the two young men, and a genuine smile crinkled his wrinkled features. "Boys, as long as there are people like you looking out for this world, I can have hope for the future. I don't need to remind you of how critical this investigation is, so I won't. All I can do is wish the two of you good luck."

"We'll be careful." said Jeff, hoisting a dangerous looking gun on his shoulder. "If all goes well, we should be back before sundown tonight."

"And if things go even better, we'll be back for dinner." said Ness with a grin. "Thank you for letting me stay the night Doctor. Jeff, let's get going."

Jeff nodded and gave a curt wave to his father, who nodded in turn. As the laboratory door closed after them, Andonuts could not help but feel a stab of fear. '_Though I know they must find out what is down there... at the same time I wish it would stay buried for eternity._' The image of digging up a long dead body and finding it suddenly alive came to mind, and the Doctor shuddered at the thought. '_I wish you luck, boys, but I certainly don't envy you..._'

-----

The scene at the Deep Darkness dig site was completely unchanged from it's normal setup days earlier. The sun still hid behind a thick veil of haze, the heat was still like a wet blanket pressing in from all sides, and the machinery was still spread about in levers and lattices. People were the only thing missing from the scene, and without them, the site resembled a junkyard more than an excavation.

A loud crack split the air, and in the ensuing rumble two people appeared and skidded to a stop on the dusty ground. Ness and Jeff looked around warily, making sure that the site was completely abandoned. The only sound was that of the swamp insects chirruping afar off, saving the abandoned site from total silence.

"They sure packed up quick." said Ness, observing the heavy equipment that still had yet to be moved out. He pulled at his jacket, which was suddenly quite warm in the surrounding heat.

"Keep it on. Once we get down there, I doubt that you will want to have much skin exposed." Jeff looked toward the warning cones that marked the dig area, and started making his way toward it. Ness followed quickly behind.

As they boarded the elevator and began their descent, Ness forced himself to take a deep breath. The excitement of activity had filled him at first, as he had teleported here and found himself in a familiar place from his previous journey, but now the euphoria was slowly being siphoned away to be replaced by a dull anxiety. This was no exotic stay in Dalaam, and he surely was not going to meet anything friendly here. There had always been the sense of the unknown during his journey, but never such a fear of it. The future had always been something to look forward to, to wonder about, to move toward with anticipation, but now Ness felt that there was only death ahead of them. It was the same feeling that had come over him when he had been told about his one way ticket to face Giygas, and that there was a good chance he would not survive the final battle. '_At least then I knew my chances._' thought Ness, closing his eyes and trying to relax. '_At least then I knew what I was getting into._'

The elevator continued it's descent, eventually plunging them into darkness that was punctuated every few seconds by a bulb strung down the opposite side of the hole. Jeff handed him a mouthpiece, an oxygen mask in a cave where air had moldered for years and years, becoming stagnant. With a solemn, metallic crash, the elevator came to the base of the dig.

Looking around, this area was even more desolate than the site above had been. Advanced digging machinery sat in various stages of progress, stopped as suddenly as if the workers had jumped up and ran for the proverbial hills. The silence roared in their ears and exerted an almost palpable pressure.

"Look." said Jeff in a hushed voice, pointing toward a hole in the wall that was little more than a human sized crack. Though they were the only two souls for miles, the need to whisper was implied in the forbidding silence. The companions began to move slowly toward the taped off section of wall, ducking under and approaching the entrance to the tunnel. Jeff and Ness exchanged a look, as if daring the other to go first, before the scientist's son handed the chosen one a heavy black flashlight. Grimly, he clicked it on and pointed it into the darkened crevasse. A vague sense of fear was drifting from it like a pall of smoke, but the rational part of Ness' mind told him he was just getting jittery. After taking a deep breath through his breather, Ness hoisted his backpack and stepped through. Jeff followed his footsteps closely.

They discovered that the tunnel, only wide enough to fit one person at a time, set immediately on a decline. Their steps made little sound in the dirt underfoot, as each crunch was swallowed by the ravenous anti-sound all around them. Even the rustle of Ness' jacket, or the quiet clink of Jeff's weaponry, was lost.

Something cold set itself at the bottom of Ness' stomach, and he swallowed to try and get rid of it. The flashlight spreading illumination before them was shaking from his uncontrollably quivering hand. '_Stop it_' he thought, trying to buck up his courage. '_You have faced worse than this before. You have a good, trustworthy friend backing you up. You are not here alone, and whatever you have to face, there will be help._' These thoughts, while happening to be the most optimistic facts that his mind could come up with at the moment, only served to cause his shaking to cease; the cold ball in the pit of his stomach remained. No matter what he thought, the most basic part of his brain was still in fear. He heard Jeff push his glasses up on his nose with measured movements. '_Hang in there._' he wanted to say, but talking seemed like the most obscene thing he could do in this all-encompassing silence.

It was minutes that stretched into hours in their minds before they reached the end of the tunnel. Before them was a landing of white stone, extending into a black abyss. Ness stepped forward, and felt his sneaker crunch into the white dust. A set of footprints headed off alone, undoubtedly belonging to the late Bill Morel. Memories flooded back, and it was all that Ness could manage to remain on his feet.

Ness fell back into the moment, when he had been mercifully devoid of the faculties of touch, of taste, of emotion. What senses he had were merely artificial, as he was inhabiting a robot body. The only sound was the clanking of his metal feet and those of his three companions, along with the distant whine of machinery emanating from the army of robot fiends prepared to stand between them and the final battle. When they had come to the Cave of the Past, it had been with a strong purpose and the empowerment of the entire world being on their side. He remembered the raw energy that had coursed through him after the journey through his own mind that had unlocked the latent power of the Sanctuaries. Through all the battles they had encountered, even in the battle with Giygas itself, they had been in borrowed bodies. Nuts and bolts.

Returning to this place as a flesh and blood human caused him reactions that penetrated deep into his psyche. There would be no resistance coming against them this time, as any robots that might have outlived their master would have broken down in the intervening centuries. The solidarity only added to the pervading sense of fear that was wringing out Ness' brain like a sponge full of splinters. This place felt like a tomb, and he felt like a shameless grave robber about to be subject to divine fury. Gesturing mutely to Jeff, against his own primal will, Ness moved forward with the flashlight and swept it to try and look around. It's rays didn't seem to go two feet out past the edge of the cliff before ending as solidly as if they'd hit a wall of black canvas. '_Just how massive is this cave?_' he wondered. Somehow, the thought hadn't occurred to him four years ago in this same spot.

The two boys walked a short distance to where a wall of white stone rose up before them, split up the middle by a triangular opening that resembled a threshold. Exactly how he remembered it.

Just inside the doorway of straight cut lines was a tunnel that seemed starkly out of place with their previous surroundings. Metal lay underfoot in a regular, bumpy pattern that repeated horizontally. Like tubes. '_Like veins_' he added mentally, shaking only slightly before moving forward. His mind honed to a point directly past the cone of light before him, daring whatever lay beyond it to step forward. At this point, he left like nothing could surprise him.

The hallway turned abruptly, and the two came up against the slanted wall that consisted of the same series of gray tubes, appearing at first to be metallic but upon a closer look resembling dead tissue more than anything else. An empty vessel where life once flowed. Continuing onward, Ness moved through the increasingly zig-zagging hallway with dull premonitions of what would greet him, and in full knowledge of what lay before him. There was no longer a doubt in his mind as to the truth of this place. All their assumptions were proving themselves to be true.

The final assumption reared itself when the hallway of death opened up into a room of coiling tubes and protrusions. Absent of life, the dusty room felt far less threatening than what Ness had expected. He almost gave a sigh of relief, but instead adopted a grim expression and walked up to the far wall. The empty veins below him formed something akin to stairs, which led up to the climax of this whole expedition, where the cosmic destroyer himself had taken up residence. The Devil's Machine.

It was where all of the tentacle-like veins convened, where the flow of life had once come to a nexus of energy and powered the being that would have destroyed mankind. It was where Pokey had appeared for the final time and sided with the ultimate evil. It showed itself to be a blank, clouded, lifeless eye.

Ness shined his light up into it, this orb that was easily twice his height, and saw his own scared reflection pale inside of it. Jeff stood behind him at the bottom of the steps, every line in his face taut. He wanted to turn to address his friend, but then he would feel as if the dead eye was staring at him behind his back. So instead, he brought up a hand, slowly, trembling, and placed it gently on the vacant eye that was watching him like the obelisk of a memory long forgotten. It was cool to the touch, and belied a vast expanse inside, or beyond, it's circular shape.

Something tickled at the back of Ness' mind, and he wrinkled his face to try and identify it. Ignoring it, he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. '_There is no doubt that this is the same Devil's Machine that housed Giygas in the original Cave of the Past. It's impossible to know how long ago that Giygas existed, so it's impossible to know how long it's been sitting here, dead. Lucky for us, there's not even a trace of life still in this. I can see why that Morel guy would have been so afraid, I think the only way I can even take any of this is because I know why it's here. If not that, then at least what it's function was.'_ Ness realized that he didn't even know that. The entire entity of the Devil's Machine was still an enigma, all these years after the fateful happenings that had saved the world.

_Ness_

The Chosen One turned, finally, and looked at Jeff. "We have nothing to worry about." pronounced Ness in a normal voice that sounded like a bloody scream in the silence. It wasn't until after he had spoken that the whisper at the base of his skull had even registered. He froze, eyes wide, and turned back to the sightless eye where his hand still rested. '_It can't be. It can't.'_

_Ness_

This time, it was an easily distinguishable voice just barely audible in the darkest corner of his mind. All of the blood drained from Ness' face. All life drained from his limbs as he stood there paralyzed in shock. '_No, please..._'

_Ness!_

Giygas, the embodiment of evil, spoke from somewhere deep, deep inside the Machine.

At that moment, Ness' flashlight imploded.

-----

An invisible signal shot from the depths of the earth and into space, to a mass that lay in wait on the furthest side of the moon. Acting on automatic sensors, the message was picked up, and the machinery of this unknown object sprang to life. Electricity moved through countless wires and electrodes, turning on ceiling lights and bathing the metallic interior in cold illumination. Consoles began to function, beeping with the sounds of starting up after a long dormancy. Steam hissed from long unused doors and containers. Engines crackled and started humming in low tones. Energy pumped it's way through the machine, sending the signal to every room and corner, powering it's inhabitants to action.

After all of this was accomplished, in a matter of moments, an array of pods launched from the Mothership, their destination the blue planet, under orders from their great master Giygas.

-----

The only sound, after Ness had numbly dropped the remains of the flashlight, was a steady, calm beeping coming from a piece of equipment on Jeff's belt. A red light on it was flashing, and the crimson mask it lent to their surroundings was entirely too sinister for Ness to bear. He practically jumped down the makeshift steps and approached Jeff with terror painting a grimace over his features. "What just happened?"

"A signal." said Jeff quietly, flicking on a small light attached to his shoulder and turning off the beeping black box. He took a moment to compose himself, then managed to get out, "Somehow, that Machine just activated enough to send out a signal."

"A signal to where?! To what?! Giygas is dead, the Devil's Machine is dead, there can't possibly be a signal!" cried Ness, grabbing Jeff by the collar and shaking him, causing the light to bounce erratically.

"Ness!" said Jeff, equally scared but still in command of his body. The dark circles under his eyes, along with the grim cast of his face, suddenly made him look years older. "Get a hold of yourself." he said hoarsely, "We have to escape immediately and warn Dr. Andonuts- I mean, my father. There nothing more that we can do here, I promise you that. We have to get out of here."

Ness had to close his eyes and take a deep breath through the oxygen mask before he was calmed down. Once he was, he looked straight at Jeff and said, "We can destroy it. We can end it right now."

"That is a perfectly Ness thing to say, you know. The statistical possibility of us being able to destroy that... that machine, is very unlikely. We know next to nothing about it, let alone how to effectively eradicate it. Listen, the longer we stand here arguing, the greater the chance that my father is in danger. Whatever that signal was, we have to be ready to react to it. We most certainly cannot do that standing here miles underground."

Ness gritted his teeth and gave a brief look back over his shoulder at the Devil's Machine which sat malevolently in the wall and all around them. As much as he hated the fact, Jeff was right. "Come on then, let's get out of here."

-----

Dustin opened his eyes, lying flat on his back over the disheveled sheets of his bed. He looked over his room briefly and wondered what had awoken him. A voice? A dream? '_Indigestion?_' he thought wryly, turning over and mashing his head deeper into his pillow. As nice as it was having the house to himself, something about being alone in it made it harder to go to fall asleep at night. The brown haired teen closed his eyes tight and willed himself to go to sleep.

Then, out of nowhere, a deafening noise like a crack of thunder followed by a massive eruption ripped through the house and nearly shook him from his bed. Dustin leaped onto his feet in surprise while the reverberations still shook the floor beneath him. "What in God's name was that?!" he said out loud, running to his window and looking out. Nothing was out of the ordinary as far into town as he could see, but afar off to the left, he thought he could see a huge light pointing up into the sky. "That's coming from the school." he muttered. Almost by reflex, he quickly grabbed a black t-shirt and pulled it on, then donned the nearest pair of jeans he could find. There was no way he would just lay back down and go to sleep when something like this had occurred out of the blue. At the very least, he could go see what the source of the noise had been, then come back and get a few hours shuteye before school. It wasn't as if his mother was there to stop him anyway. He slipped a black beanie on his head before moving to leave.

'_What if it ends up being dangerous?'_ he thought, quickly scanning his room for a makeshift weapon. A metal baseball bat lay propped up in one corner, unused since he'd gotten it for Christmas years ago. He never had been one for baseball. Dustin walked over and picked it up, hefting it once or twice to test it's weight. He thought that if he was attacked, it might be sufficient to bash a couple heads in. His gaze, however, drifted over to his computer desk and the pile of mess that lay on it. Dropping the bat, he opened the drawer and rifled through the contents for a moment before pulling out a silvery butterfly knife. '_I would feel way safer with this in my pocket._' he thought, slipping it into his jeans and kicking the baseball bat back into the corner on his way out.

-----

The sound of metal crashing upon stone awoke Celeste from her pleasant slumber on the mossy ground. She sat up and looked up to the patch of sky visible through the top of the vale, and saw a white streak leading from an invisible point to the ground somewhere just over the lip of the crag. '_It's beautiful._' she thought. Perhaps a meteorite had fallen to Earth just nearby? She knew that it was rare for meteorites to end up much bigger than a baseball after passing through the atmosphere, so logically for one to have made such a horrendous noise it had to be particularly huge.

Considering she was about a mile and a half from town, she would be the first one to see it if she went immediately. '_I wonder what it will look like?_' she thought, jumping up and dusting her skirt off excitedly. Taking one last look over her shoulder at the stone and it's halo of mushrooms, she ran out into the cave.

The cave was just as fascinating of a natural structure as the vale was. Erosion had put multiple holes in the ceiling, which allowed pale moonlight to filter through and illuminate the stone walls and floor. It was a matter of a few short climbs to reach the entrance to the vale where she stood, and she could see the main entrance glowing far below from the moonlit grass just beyond it. Shadows appeared in the doorway there, and Celeste quickly moved behind a nearby boulder, curious. Her heart was pounding. '_Nobody else ever comes up here. How could somebody have arrived at the meteorite so quickly?_' her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices just below, still inside the entrance to the cave.

"Report to the Commander that we have arrived as expected, and the troops are ready to be deployed." Celeste had to blink once or twice in confusion. The speaker was clearly inhuman, resembling the drone of a machine more than a person's voice. "Deploy the Guardian to the entrance of Sanctuary-0291. Eliminate any resistance you find there." A chill swept through Celeste at the word 'eliminate'.

'_Commander? Guardian? What is going on?_' she thought, suddenly fearing for her life. None of this was making any sense, and the unreality of the moment was making her head spin. '_I can't just sit here and wait for whatever it is to find me. Maybe if I look now I can find a better hiding place._' Deciding on a plan of action cleared her mind slightly, enough that she could peek ever so slightly around the rock. She jerked it back in shock and pinned herself up against the rock, her mouth suddenly dry.

Metallic footfalls rang out as the mystery speaker moved closer and closer to the entrance to the vale, where Celeste crouched hidden. The steps slowed as it neared her location, and she could only slink closer to the wall in fright, wishing she were invisible. The figure stepped into a ray of moonlight as it entered her vision, and the girl was forced to suppress a gasp. It was humanoid in shape and covered in a metallic silver sheen, with it's only decorations being a rectangular strip of reflective glass for eyes and markings resembling a badge on it's chest. A series of clicks and whirrs emanated from it as it stood, scanning the area in front of it with robotic efficiency. Celeste sat perfectly still, hoping and praying that she would not be discovered.


	5. Chapter 5: An Encounter

CHAPTER 5 -- An Encounter

There was a feeling in the air of some sort of news-worthy event occurring in Alphed. People were sticking their heads out of windows or occupying their front porches to try and get a good view of the action, but the suburbs were too far removed from the school to shed any light on the horrendous noise that had awakened the neighborhood. The mumbling clouds above were glowing white from an unknown source further in town, and that was about all anyone could figure out. No one person in particular went to investigate, as sleep still fogged the collective consciousness and conversations between neighbors remained at whispers. People watched with dazed expressions as a teenager in a black shirt and beanie ran past at full tilt, breaking the muffled silence. Most of the suburb dwellers decided that tomorrow they would just watch what had occurred on TV and shuffled back to their respective beds.

Dustin skidded to a halt and looked around at the unlit suburbia. An uneasy feeling had come over him suddenly, but after scanning his surroundings there was nothing unusual in sight. Turning slightly, a nondescript form huddled close to the ground caught his eye. It was that rancorous dog, the one that was usually barking it's head off at him on his way home from school. The mutt was far from it's usual self, scrunched up against the fencepost it was chained to, whimpering softly and shaking from tail to muzzle. Something about seeing it looking so pathetic hit Dustin with a shot of sympathy, and he bent down to murmur at it, "Now now, it's ok little guy, there's nothing to be afraid of."

It looked up at him slightly and addressed him with big watery eyes. There was something that was freaking the dog out to no end, and the logical assumption was that it had to do with the recent noise. Dustin was reminded of how animals will typically be the first to know when a tornado or thunderstorm is about to hit, well before humans expect. '_What disaster is gonna hit this time, little fella?'_ he thought, reaching out to pet the dog in an attempt to calm it down.

The dog froze suddenly, its ears back and down. A malicious glint entered it's eyes, and Dustin pulled away in surprise. It let out a growl that rattled like a saw on granite, then barked viciously at him. '_What the-?!'_ What had he done to make it angry? Without any warning, the dog snapped and lunged at Dustin with it's muzzle agape. He barely dove backwards in time to avoid the strike, and the chain cracking to it's full length on the dog's neck barely stopped the maddened dog from tearing into him. If the beast was any bigger, Dustin would have been seriously fearing for his life. It barked and thrashed in it's attempt to get to him, but the metal chain stopped it fast. Getting past his initial shock, Dustin hastily got to his feet and ran, heart racing.

The streets of Alphed were eerily devoid of life at this hour of night, there were no cars on the road and scant few parked along it's side. Dustin kept on running until he reached the corner bakery, where he stopped to catch his breath. The only sounds accompanying his sprint was his own footsteps, the buzzing of the streetlights above him, and vague, afar-off sounds coming from the school. They spurred him on as he started to wonder why he had even bothered to come outside. '_Something really weird is going on, and I have to know what it is.'_ His short sprint had taken a lot out of him since he was unused to this kind of exertion, so almost a minute later he was still breathing heavily. The shops and stores lining the street were all dark, shadows looming large on their inner walls. Shaking off his fatigue and lingering nervousness, Dustin stood up and looked down the long street to the school.

He was afforded a better view from this angle, but it was not enough to let him know exactly what was going on. He could clearly see that some sort of light was pointing nearly straight up into the sky, as if from multiple flood lights, but this had dimmed since when he'd first observed it from his window. It looked like there were other lights shedding an orange glow on the street and parking lot adjacent to the school. Dustin blinked, '_Fire?'_ he thought, dropping into a run once again. His curiosity was too piqued to turn back now.

Minutes later he stood on the sidewalk facing the school. Or, at least, what was left of it.

He stood before a collection of girders and bricks pointing upward at crazy angles amidst a field of stone and rubble. Fire was indeed burning at odd intervals, in a stack of computer paper or what remained of a teacher's desk. The smell of grit and gas was prominent, causing Dustin to wrinkle his nose and nearly sneeze. The dust from the destruction was still floating heavily amidst the wreckage, causing the prominent rays of light to be even more noticeable. They sat a distance away from him, toward the back of the school.

His mind raced to try and think if any people would still be at the school this late. A teacher, perhaps, or a maintenance worker? If there was anyone still alive, then they would need help. Sirens had started blaring somewhere a few streets away, but from the sound of it the fire engines and emergency crews wouldn't arrive for another few minutes. Without another thought, Dustin jumped over an errant slab of masonry and made his way into the wreckage.

-----

Starman B-7794 scanned the area of Sanctuary-0291 for signs of life. Advanced machinery pulsated and whirled inside of it's silver metallic frame as it carried out its orders with robotic efficiency.

"No signs of life." it reported, and his Captain's voice crackled in his aural receptors,

"Excellent. Deploy the Guardian and return to base."

More machinery clicked inside the Starman as a square section on it's chest lifted away to reveal a small compartment. It reached in and removed a golden, crystalline ball from the web of wires strung through it's insides. The ball was hollow, but its contents were difficult to define, seeming to exist somewhere between white smoke and a burning liquid. The Starman carefully moved the crystal with one tentacle like arm so that it was positioned just before the entrance to the vale.

Once activated, the crystal began to glow softly and support itself in midair when the Starman released it. It would remain so until the proximity of Sanctuary-0291 was breached, at which time the Guardian would deploy and eliminate the intruders. It was a strategy that should have worked during the War of Giygas, but the Chosen One was still able to defeat the previous Guardians and gain access to the Sanctuaries. As part of Precaution, a new batch of Guardians had been bred that were far enhanced past the abilities of the original Guardians. Statistically, if and when a new Chosen One appeared, he would stand no chance.

His duties fulfilled, the Starman turned on a heel and made his way back from whence he had came. It was a few moments after that when Celeste remembered how to breathe.

-----

Smoke assaulted Dustin's eyes the moment he stepped into the ruined school building. He coughed as the thick smog burned in his eyes and caught in his throat, causing him to throw an arm across his nose and mouth. Cracks riddled the linoleum beneath him, and large chunks of what had been the front door and offices were riddling the path before him. Still trying not to breathe too deeply, he forged on ahead and came out of the thickest part of the smoke to what had once been a hallway full of lockers. There were little personal knick-knacks everywhere, music players and tissue boxes and schoolbooks and papers, all spread haphazard before him. Dustin stopped and looked around, trying to listen for any people that might be nearby. Only the steady crackle of a nearby fire and the occasionally crumbling piece of masonry answered him.

Seeing that one of the classroom doors was still standing, Dustin approached it and turned the handle, only to see the entire thing fall flat in front of him. "So much for that." he winced, stepping over the door and into the room. It had escaped a lot of whatever had decimated the main area, so a few desks were still upright and most of the windows had not been smashed. The room was empty.

Running to the room across the hall yielded a similar sight; aside from a long, jagged rend in the far wall that looked out onto the side parking lot and playground, nothing stood out of the ordinary. '_What could possibly have caused this much damage?_' he thought, returning to the hall and wading through the sea of junk. A sudden clattering from the gymnasium echoed out to him, and it was a few moments of struggling before Dustin had made it far enough to climb over a pile of ruined brick and through the double doors.

What he saw inside was more than half of the tall metal roof caved in, with barely a quarter of lacquered floor still visible. A faint noise came to him from just ahead, and Dustin dodged around a fallen rafter to pursue it. He looked around, having lost the sound, when a feeble cough sounded from somewhere near his feet. Looking down in horror, Dustin saw a man in a blue jumpsuit trapped beneath a gigantic slab of metal roofing with only his left arm, upper body, and head still visible.

'_Maintenance._' was Dustin's first thought as he grimly knelt beside the wounded man. The piece of roofing was massive, and there was no way that Dustin would be lifting it off by himself, and probably not even if he had help. Feeling helpless, all he could do was grip the maintenance worker's gritty hand and feel a tiny grip in response. The man's eyes opened, watery blue, and fixed Dustin with an unfocused stare. He began to babble, obviously delirious, and Dustin was forced to kneel there and listen to him.

"Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own two-" here he spasmed with a fit of coughing then winced and continued, "-with my own two eyes. All I was doing was sweeping off the gym floor, aghh... last thing I had to do for the night, wouldn't you know. There was a sound I thought what was an airplane flying overhead, paid it no heed. But the sound kept gettin' louder and louder until I didn't know what was going on. Suddenly I knew I was in real danger, so I started to run... but then the meteor crashed straight through the top there and buried itself toward the back of the building, fair as I can tell. Blast my luck I was still alive when I came to, moments later, but this little piece of roof had pinned me down." A weak smile crossed the man's face.

Something about the man's words flicked a switch in Dustin's mind. '_A meteor? He says a meteor hit the school._' he thought, gripping the worker's hand tighter, saying, "Listen, I'm going to go get some help and you're going to be all right. I just need you-"

"Then I heard another noise." said the helpless man, a strained tone entering his voice. He talked as if Dustin had not spoken, as if he weren't even there but what he had to say must be said before his death. "It sounded like footsteps, but it was all wrong. All wrong. The footsteps stopped, and when I looked I saw a monster. I wish I had been hallucinating, but there was- there was no doubt that I saw what I saw. It had three eyes, and was walking on all these tentacles when it came. I was terrified, it was all I could do to play dead and hope it didn't see me. It spoke, but the words were all jumbled. Too many consonants, or something. Ohh, there's no time. It's all happening again!" The man gave a hacking cough that caused a trickle of blood to stream from his mouth. Dustin sprang forward to try and lift the slab even a fraction to let the man breathe. It was useless.

Panting heavily, starting to feel a sense of foreboding, Dustin thought to ask, "What's happening again? What are you talking about?"

The maintenance worker seemed to notice Dustin for the first time, and his eyes bugged nearly out of their sockets as he whispered with an intensity that could not have been matched if he had screamed at the top of his lungs,

"Giygas. Just like four years ago. The aliens have returned."

A chill swept down Dustin's spine, and he stood up out of reflex. Before he could think or act, a metallic sound echoed out of the hallway. Then again, and again. Footsteps.

Suddenly afraid, Dustin looked back down at the man, who had passed out. The steps rang out with an unnatural clatter, like that of machinery, and they were moving closer to him down the main hallway. A quick look around told Dustin that there were no other exits, and he wasn't about to press his luck by climbing up onto the remains of the roof. Suddenly the footsteps stopped, and Dustin thought that he heard the subtle whir of a computer just past the gym wall.

Right when he thought that he was safe, the air a few yards in front of him shimmered, and a tall silvery shape materialized. Dustin blinked once or twice in case his eyes were being fooled, or if he was dead and this was a dream, or anything to explain what he was seeing. His first thought was that is was a man in some kind of futuristic spacesuit, but the exterior of the suit was one solid silver color, no breaks or joints. In fact the only features it had were those of a reflective strip where eyes would be, and markings resembling a badge on it's chest.

It stood regarding him silently, it's slender hands resting on it's hips. Clicks and whirrs emitted from it, belying the machinery that must have been powering it. '_A robot?'_ thought Dustin incredulously, but this was like no robot he had ever seen before.

-----

Their feet pounded the rocky tunnel floor as the pair of heroes rushed for the exit. Jeff's weapons were jostling against each other with clicks and clacks that accompanied their loud footfalls and heavy, masked breathing. Ness followed close behind, trying to escape the feeling of malevolence that filled the tunnel and crawled under his skin. Moment by moment a sinister presence was inexplicably welling up in the cave beneath them that caused them both to try and increase their speed up the incline. When they finally came through the crack into the main dig site, both heroes were nearly exhausted with fright.

Knowing that every second counted in their escape, they ran to the elevator and slammed the mesh door shut. Jeff pounded the button and it sprang into motion, leaving the abandoned dig below them in a matter of seconds.

They both slid to the ground and panted for air, trying to recover in the moment of rest the elevator afforded. Ness had to gasp a few times before he was able to say, "That signal, who do you think it was sent to?"

"Or what." replied Jeff cryptically. He wiped the sweat from his brow before answering fully, "Since it was the Devil's Machine that sent it, we can only assume the worst. Perhaps Giygas had countermeasures for if it was ever defeated, and we've mistakenly activated them. Or maybe it kept a stock of monsters hidden away somewhere which the signal activated. It's impossible to know fully until we get back to the lab."

The possibilities were endless, and endlessly chilling. As they sat in the rapidly ascending elevator, cities could be under attack, people could be in danger, Giygas could already be extending it's corrupting influence over the world. '_Is it really possible? He's returned, and I've never felt more powerless._' When imagining rounding up the other two of the Chosen Four to fight Giygas yet again, Ness felt an almost physical pain. He doubted that even he would be able to find the courage for another war.

Light was growing in the tunnel, and Ness straightened up quickly. They would have to teleport as soon as possible once they reached the top, so Ness cleared his mind and readied the teleportation. When the elevator slowed and finally came to a stop, both Jeff and Ness found that the dig site was no longer unpopulated. Row upon row of silver and gold bodies stood between them and freedom.

Jeff muffled a shocked curse and whipped his hand to a weapon at his side. At least thirty Starmen were clustered near the hole, the typical silver type interspersed with the upgraded Starman Supers. The clicking and whirring of all their machinery combined resembled the sound of a swarm of devouring insects.

Ness' mind raced for how best to deal with all of these enemies. '_How did they even get here? I haven't seen a single Starman for the past four years and now this many show up all at once?' _His brain was working as fast as his heart was beating, thudding painfully in his chest, but the thoughts were just hitting brick walls of panic. Escape was out of the question, with a deep pit behind them and a mass of enemies before them. '_Fight or flight._' thought Ness grimly.

Mere seconds had passed since the two of them had stepped from the elevator, and none of the Starmen had yet moved. All it took for the two heroes to know their plan was a brief meeting of eyes. Just like on their journey, the two could synchronize their attacks for the maximum effectiveness without having to speak a single word; after enough battles it had become like a reflex. The message passed between them in a moment, and Jeff pulled a gun with a pair of antennae mounted on the muzzle off his back and into his hands. In the same instant, Ness gathered his mental energy for a long overdue flexing of his psychic muscle.

'_One blast is all it will take._' he thought, feeling the power build up inside. It flowed until he felt like a miniature sun for all of the heat and light radiating from him. As the two heroes readied their assault, the Starmen at the front line stepped back slightly in fear, seeming to reconsider whether a full frontal attack was the best option. A devilish grin split Ness' face as he raised one arm to point at the horde. A click came from Jeff's gun, and a thick spark of energy pulsed between the antennae. As if he were on top of a steep hill standing behind a colossal boulder, Ness pushed against the throbbing mass of energy in his mind to discharge it in a devastating wave.

Then, suddenly, as if a great metal sluice had crashed down between him and his reservoir of psychic power, the energy was gone. The sudden severance felt as if an arm had been chopped off; something that was a deeply rooted part of his psyche had been completely cut off from him in an instant. The hollowness in his mind rang like a tuning fork.

Astonished, Ness' power clouded vision snapped into focus. He saw a lone Starman that had teleported right in front of him and was standing with it's arm's outstretched. He became aware of something coldly metallic encircling his head, and in that moment he understood. Horror filled his mind where power had once resided.

"Ness!!" shouted Jeff, leveling the Gaia Beam and discharging it at the single Starman. The effect was instantaneous, and the silver robot was blown to smithereens in the wake of a bolt of pure energy. As if this were the cue, the rest of the Starman began their advance. "Ness, what happened?! Ness!!"

Jeff's voice became further and further away as the Chosen One felt himself falling down, down, down through the ground, and up into the sky.

-----

The silvery space being standing before Dustin had not moved from it's perch on top of a ruined tangle of metal and stone. Dustin tried to fathom how it had come to be here in his little backwoods town, where the most interesting occurrences ranged from so-and-so's marriage to whats-his-face's new car purchase. Invasions by sentient robots was definitely low on the list of uncommon events.

"Greetings life form." said the Starman in a monotone. Dustin was at a loss as to what kind of response that prompted. "You will not be harmed at this time, you will be collected as a specimen for the glory of Lord Giygas." Hearing the name come from this unknown being confirmed the dying workman's words, and Dustin felt himself shiver with the realization. This was obviously a servant under the command of the Universal Cosmic Destroyer. Dustin slowly started to back away toward the exit, since all he wanted to do was get out of this maddeningly surreal situation. Maybe he would just wake up in his bed, and the school would still be in one piece, and he wouldn't be being threatened by a silver spaceman.

Said spaceman remained unmoved. "If you attempt to resist, there will be no question of your immediate termination." it said in a dead monotone.

Dustin froze, and suddenly remembered the weight settled in the back pocket of his jeans. His eyes flicked unconsciously to where his weapon rested. '_My knife... would it really work on this thing?_' Seeing the Starman still standing as if waiting to see Dustin's reaction, he knew that he had little chance of escaping it. It had just teleported straight through a solid wall, after all. Determination set into Dustin's eyes as he dropped his hands to his sides. '_Whatever happens, I have to try and fight this thing.'_

"Alright, I give up. Just... don't hurt me, please." He tried his best to sound pathetic, but his stubborn will made it difficult to simper at a machine. The point got across, as after a few beeps and clicks the spaceman started walking toward him. It moved with a fluid, measured pace, it's construction masking any machinery moving under the surface. '_The technology is so advanced, where did this thing come from?_'

It's steps brought it within five steps of where Dustin stood, moving at the same methodic pace over the rubble. When it reached that point, after shooting a desperate prayer to whomever was listening, he dropped into a crouch, whipped the butterfly knife out of his pocket and exposed the blade in one swift motion. In the next moment, he sprang directly at his enemy. As the robot was in midstep, it was too slow to react as Dustin came at it and slashed directly across it's chest. He felt the blade cut into the thing's metal skin, and when the blow was finished it was left with a gaping tear that flashed with sparks and electricity.

From nowhere, a force blasted Dustin back, and he was barely able to keep his feet. A bubble of nearly transparent energy had surrounded the robot, which staggered briefly from it's wound. It's right arm hung limp at it's side, disabled, and sparks continued to jump from the exposed circuitry. "Now you will die, human." it said dispassionately, removing the shield and raising it's fully functional left arm. A beam of white light shot out and tore through the air straight at Dustin.

Without thinking, on pure reflex, Dustin's mind cleared as suddenly as if a light had turned on in a dark room, as if a raindrop had caused a ripple in a placid mountain lake. He moved his free hand in a sweep toward the beam, and with a flash the deadly ray reflected itself to crash into the wall with a brief explosion. If a robot could show astonishment, then the spaceman's sudden backstep and frenzied internal whirring belied it.

His mind still transparently clear, Dustin moved his hand again. This time, the massive slab of stone and metal pinning the worker to the ground lifted as quietly and easily as if it weighed no more than a pencil. Or a salt shaker.

"Impossible." the robot intoned, attempting to activate it's teleporter to escape. With one final gesture, Dustin sent the slab flying through the air like a bullet. The robot was blasted off it's feet and crushed against the floor in a shower of sparks and shrapnel as the broken piece of masonry skidded to a heavy halt.

Moments passed before even a blip of thought swept through Dustin's mind. He blinked, then lowered his arms to find he was shaking from head to toe. Having come within a hairsbreadth of death caused him to fall suddenly on his knees. '_What did I just do?_' he asked himself, running the events of the past few moments through his head.

It felt like remembering a scene from a movie more than recalling something he had been directly involved in. '_I moved it myself? But... how?'_

While the pendulum of Dustin swung back and forth between disbelief and a numb sort of awe, a sound was rising from somewhere beneath the school. It's muffled tone was indistinguishable at first, but after a few repetitions revealed itself as the low wailing of a siren. Dustin was in too much shock to take notice of it, until a much more immediate sound broke him from his reverie. Metallic footsteps. Hundreds of them.

A Starman that to all appearances was exactly the same make as his previous opponent teleported into view at the other end of the room, like it had stepped straight through the wall. The furious whizzing and crackling of it's insides reached Dustin all the way across the gym. "Intruder has felled Starman B-7781. Eliminate. Eliminate." it buzzed, starting to move forward.

Dustin willed his body to move, to stand and face his new opponent, but his body felt drained of all willpower. So he sat mutely on the floor and watched the robot approaching him. To his faint surprise, another spaceman stepped through the far wall and began it's advance. It was followed by another. And another.

In a matter of moments a crowd of robots was advancing on Dustin, their whirring and clicking playing a miniature melody of impending doom. '_Looks like this is it._' thought Dustin, who had somehow found the strength to rise to his feet. The foremost robot lifted its arm and readied to fire. Dustin flinched to brace against the pain by closing his eyes tightly shut.

A deafening crack filled the room with sound that shook the floor at Dustin's feet. There was a frenzied series of alarmed robotic outcries, followed immediately the hideous noise of a tin can being torn completely in two. In the next few seconds there was only clash after rending clash, underscored by sharp fizzes and pops, and what sounded like the air itself being cut to ribbons. Dustin ventured to open his eyes just a crack, and saw a space robot's torso completely separate from it's lower body in a spray of sparks and wires. Something flashed briefly from behind it, obviously that which had wreaked the damage. Dustin opened his eyes fully to try and see what it was.

Standing in the midst of a graveyard of scrap metal and sparks was a bronzed god whose hair was pulled back into a tight black tail. A black and silver cloak billowed as his body finally came to rest, and the instrument of destruction, a shining sword, rested easily in one hand. He flipped it to point down, then slid it into its sheath with a clean snap. The warrior walked past the wreckage to stand before a dazed and confused Dustin.

"So you're him." he said, and his voice was silk. Dustin had to blink in total disbelief, as this man had come out of nowhere and completely decimated at least fifteen deadly robots without so much as breaking a sweat. At a loss for words, the boy merely stood and looked up at the older man blankly. He was obviously foreign, with slightly slanted eyes, tan skin, and raven black hair. Even his clothes were exotic, a silver and black vest lay open on his chest, while baggy white leggings and black slippers covered his lower half.

"I believe that thanks are in order, since I have just saved your life." This rather comical phrase was spoken without a hint of movement on the man's stoic face.

Dustin remained completely dumbstruck. The mysterious man sighed, and shifted his weight slightly. A barely perceptible smirk thinned his lips. "At least tell me your name."

"Dustin." he managed.

"Then it is a pleasure to meet you, Chosen One."


	6. Chapter 6: A Prince from a Far Off Land

b Author's Note /b - Slightly revised as of 9/1/07

CHAPTER 6 -- A Prince from a Far Off Land

Dustin blinked once, then shook his head. Was this really happening? "Chosen One, what... what are you talking about?"

The tan skinned foreigner fingered the handle of his blade as he spoke, "I have watched and listened to many things these past four years, Dustin. I have seen the Earth recover from the onslaught of the Universal Cosmic Destroyer, I have seen new life appear and heard the sounds of hope returning. Now, however, I have heard a discordant tone in the air. A sound like that of old, and it chills me to the core. All of nature hushes at the noise. Though I could scarcely believe it, Giygas has once again resurfaced, in this age."

He turned and looked up at the moon, his profile a chiseled silhouette. "Time is like a clay pot ever being molded. At certain times a blemish appears, but the potter moves to reform it. Time passes, and it is as if the mischance had never occurred. Soon however, another blemish appears in the form of the last. The potter moves in a similar way to reform the pot to what it is intended to be." Here, the man fixed Dustin with cold, intense eyes. "Giygas once before sought to stain this world with blood, but somehow he was stopped. Forces beyond our control ordained a Chosen One, along with three others, and laid out the events that would lead to Giygas' downfall. These events came to pass, just as they were foretold. Now that Giygas has returned, certain things have come to pass that tell of the Chosen One rising yet again to face Giygas. That Chosen One is you."

Dustin tried to comprehend the rush of information being thrown at him, and failed. His mind could not accept the things he was being told. "What... but why would it be me? What makes me different from anyone else?"

"Perhaps you have recently noticed a strange ability that you have strived to control? Maybe you caused a candle to light all on it's own, or moved an object with nothing but your will." Dustin swallowed hard as he recalled the massive piece of stone he had somehow used to destroy a Starman. He remembered how hard it had been to lift even a pencil, and for the first time wondered at the nature of his latent psychic ability. The man looked at him and smiled slightly. "I can see by the look in your eyes that I am correct. But I knew this before I even came here, I was sure of it. It is only natural that the Chosen One would be sensitive to PSI, and have great aptitude for it."

"PSI?" said Dustin. "I don't have those kinds of powers. I'm not able to do all the things that I've read people with PSI can do."

"Not yet, perhaps. But in time I believe you will discover that you are capable of more than you think. Next to that, You are of the same age that the previous Chosen One was when he embarked on his quest. You were awakened in the night by a terrible sound, that of a meteor coming to Earth, the same sound another boy heard four years ago. A strange messenger averts danger and tells of the Chosen Boy's destiny, this also came to pass. Finally, you have a pure heart, though you may not realize it. I can see it in you. You have the potential to influence many people and be a great boon to this world."

"None of that means anything. I mean, it could all be circumstantial."

"Yes, it could." admitted the man, folding his arms. "But you are here, and no one else. That is proof enough."

Shoving all of this new data to a far corner of his mind, and starting to get a headache from this bizarre night, Dustin ripped off his beanie and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. "You still haven't told me your name." he said, thinking of nothing else to say.

The man was silent for a moment before he responded with a bow, "I am Prince Poo of Dalaam, and I am here to protect you."

The name registered somewhere in Dustin's head, and he tried to remember where he'd heard the name. "Dalaam. That's a city in the middle of the mountains in... Chommo, I think? But that's impossible, Chommo is on another continent!"

Poo grinned outright at this and said, "When one has access to PSI, certain restrictions such as time and space seem less.. restricting."

Before he could continue, a deep rumble echoed from somewhere far below them. Instantly alert, Poo crouched down as if listening, then sprang to his feet. "We must move. The enemy is mobilizing."

Yet again Dustin blinked in confusion. "The enemy?"

"What you believe to be a meteor that landed here is, in actuality, a spaceship, a carrier holding the invasion force of Giygas' new army. I know little of where they came from, but I do know that this is not the only place that they have landed. There is no time to discuss, they have already begun burrowing and have started constructing a base below the ground."

Dustin's jaw dropped. An alien base, right in the middle of Alphed? It was unthinkable. Then again, a lot of things seemed unthinkable at the moment. "Then we have to stop them. There's no way I'm letting a bunch of aliens set up shop in my town."

"Wise words. You prove yourself more by the moment. I wonder how many would flee given the same circumstances? No matter. Come, I will lead the way, but stay close. These foes will be far beyond your ability."

The Prince moved to the exit with quick strides, his cloak flapping liquidly behind him. Dustin fitted his beanie back on to his head and let out a long breath before standing to follow him. A soft groan from the floor stopped him in his tracks. The maintenance worker lay there, the slab that had previously pinned his body to the floor being miraculously, accidentally thrown to the other side of the room by Dustin's mind.

In a moment Dustin was at his side, and had to choke back his gag reflex. The man's body was horrendously crushed, his legs snapped in at least four spots, his lower torso nearly flattened and bone exposed at too many places to count. It was obvious that he had little time to live. Wishing there was some way he could help and feeling tears of frustration coming to his eyes, Dustin clenched his fists to his face. This whole thing wasn't making any sense, and now an innocent man was going to die because of some alien invasion? It was enough to make Dustin's head spin, to make the room spin.

He felt Poo's presence at his shoulder. "He is badly injured.. but all is not lost."

Dustin opened his eyes and looked up at Poo. Unconcerned, the man leaned down and held his hand over the worker's broken body. Poo closed his eyes, and a warm glow emanated from his hand. "Be healed." he said, and the glow fell onto the worker's body. Where the light settled, bleeding stopped and flesh knit itself together before Dustin's eyes. It was a matter of a few moments before the Prince straightened and the man lay fully recovered, peacefully at rest.

Awe overcame Dustin as he touched where the man's leg where it had been hopelessly shattered. It was perfectly healed. "How..." said Dustin, when the answer became clear without his asking. "You used PSI, didn't you?"

"That is correct." said Poo, looking impassively at the worker he had just brought from the brink of death. "With a mastery of PSI comes the power to heal even the most grievous of injuries. I imagine that soon you will learn the ways and means of it." He glanced over his shoulder. "We must go, too much time has already been spent here."

"But what about-" said Dustin, but Poo just grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. His bracing grip was enough to bring Dustin fully back to his senses.

"He will recover, do not trouble yourself with his fate. Now come, I implore you." Dustin followed as Poo moved swiftly over the rubble and out of the room, stopping only to glance back at the ruined remains of the Starmen.

-----

Celeste sat heavily on a roadside bench, trying to will her heart to slow down and vainly attempting to catch her breath. The past few minutes had been a blur; exiting the cave into the moonlight, she had been met with an otherwordly scene. A long ragged trail was torn into the ground where the meteor had landed, and at its resting place lay a huge silver sphere. Blinking back disbelief, she had cautiously approached and felt rather than heard signs of life nearby. Something was subtly shaking the ground underfoot.

The spaceship was empty, and Celeste found she hadn't had the courage to walk inside it. Next to the silver meteor were signs of digging, earth tossed hastily in all directions and stamped down by many feet. Judging by the prints, there were at least twenty of whatever had been inside the meteor. '_Not a meteor... a spaceship._' she thought, as incredulous as it sounded in her mind. Yet there was no doubt that the thing was a transport from outer space.

A slithering noise had come from the hole, and Celeste had jumped as fast as she could for a nearby mound of dirt to hide behind. She barely had concealed herself when a horrific monster lifted itself out of the ground. It consisted of a small, oval shaped body with a single eye and gaping mouth, two more eyes positioned on the end of stalks, and seemed to move through a number of lithe tentacles that acted for legs. It looked around the area, eyes narrowed, then gave an alien sort of shrug and slithered off into the silver capsule where a noisy clanking could be heard. Celeste, sitting in the shadows of that moonlit night, was terrified beyond her wits.

'_Aliens and silver robots and spaceships... This is too much. It can't be real._' she thought, leaning back on the bench and trying to relax. Anyone with a brain could connect these signs with those from the history books, though. Four years ago the world had known similar threats, an alien invasion and those that rose to counter it, the War of Giygas. '_That all ended though, all those years ago. How could it be happening again?_'

Sighing, Celeste found the presence of mind to check her cell phone clock. '_12:27... How long was I waiting in that cave?_' she thought. Her mother, naturally, would be furious with her, and something told Celeste that a story about aliens and spaceships wasn't going to cut it for an excuse. Mourning her eventual punishment, Celeste stood up slowly and made her way back to her house.

-----

The shattered halls of the school melted into a blur as he and Poo moved swiftly through the smog. Dustin noted how the devastation only increased the further back they moved, entire rooms had fallen in and a starless night sky was peeking through in more places than he could count. Once Poo helped him over a particularly large mound of dirt and metal, the crash site came into focus.

The smog cleared away as suddenly as if the area was encased in glass. They found themselves standing in what had previously been the teacher's lounge, recognizable only by a couch buried halfway into the floor, and a coffee machine that was miraculously intact on top of a bookshelf. Everything else was either incinerated or blasted to the corners. What lay at the center, in the middle of a ring of scorched earth, was a silver sphere, taller than Dustin but recessed partially into the ground. An oval door lay unhinged in front of it, giving a brief view of a padded interior and chrome machinery.

"What _is_ that?" he asked, moving closer to inspect it. Poo's firm hand clenched his shoulder and kept him rooted.

"I'd advise you not to approach it, it is tainted with Giygas' energy, where his minions lay dormant for all these years waiting to descend to earth." He pointed off to the left of the strange spaceship. "What we must concern ourselves with lies there."

In a shadowed corner, where Dustin had failed to notice, lay a circular hole with a metal ladder sticking out of it. It was distinctly out of place among what had previously been a teacher's lounge, since there was most certainly not a lower level to the school. "A ladder?"

"A tunnel. The enemy has already burrowed into the ground, and is no doubt beginning construction of their base as we speak. If we move quickly, we may yet catch them by surprise." Poo moved the the ladder and swung down onto it. Dustin followed as quickly as he could, though less gracefully.

Their immediate surroundings were that of a claustrophobic tunnel, with barely enough room for two people side by side and scant headroom. His footsteps completely silent, Poo motioned for Dustin to follow him, then set off. The passage sloped downward, the floor smooth as if cut and sanded. '_It's only been, what, an hour? How far could they have possibly gone?_' Remembering this was alien technology he was dealing with, he swallowed and kept on moving.

Strangely, the only source of light in the tunnel was the ground itself, which glowed with a faint purplish white. It cast a macabre pall over the two of them, and Poo was barely visible in his flowing black cloak. After turning a few corners and continuing ever downward, Poo held up a hand for them to stop.

A sound reached Dustin, and as he listened closer he realized it was the deep hum of some massive machine. They must be getting closer to whatever was digging this tunnel. Poo reached slowly for his blade, and rested his hand on the hilt. "Dustin." he said quietly, "Prepare yourself, they are coming."

Feeling fear wash over him, Dustin spun around and saw nothing but the dimly glowing hallway stretching behind him into darkness. His heart pounded in his chest. "We will move quickly," Poo said in an urgent whisper, "There are not many, but their commander will be very powerful. Stay back and be sure of your safety." His katana slipped out of it's sheath a fraction with a sharp click. "Now!!"

Immediately, two silver Starmen appeared, one in front and one behind, and leveled their arms to fire their weapons. Poo upraised his free hand, and a sheet of air that shimmered like a mirage slipped into the space between them and their attackers. No sooner was this done than Poo dashed forward and slashed, ripping the Starman completely in two.

Not knowing what to do, Dustin kicked out a foot and struck the Starman squarely in the chest. It's weapon discharged, and the beam of energy reflected off of Poo's psychic shield to dissipate against the tunnel walls. The robot lost it's footing and tumbled backward.

Taking his chance, Dustin turned and ran further down the tunnel, Poo leading the way with weapon glimmering. More enemies appeared to try and stop them, but a combination of the psychic shield and the prince's sword removed them without losing any momentum. It was less than a minute later that the tunnel ended in an oval shaped opening, the scene beyond one that required Dustin to look in shock for a few moments before it truly registered.

The robots had cleared out a sizable room's worth of soil and rock and compressed it against the walls and floor, leaving them flat and glossy. A single light threw the area into harsh contrast. Against one wall, a twelve foot tall machine was digging, obviously that which had cleared the way so far. It was all over chrome, sporting a great grinding wheel that was rotating slowly and doing something inexplicable to eat up the dirt. Some kind of energy source glowed from within it, visible through the pylons and extrusions that held it up, and it's structure resembled a tangle of metal more than an advanced machine. Silver metal covered some parts of the wall and floor, blackened dirt showing in the gaps between. At least ten Starmen stood arrayed before them in a curve, having prepared themselves to defend the base-in-progress.

The one standing at the center of the room was different from the rest. It resembled the other starmen to a degree, but metallic spikes rose out of its armor at the shoulders and head, and its badge was glowing red. It stood at least a head above the rest of them.

"So the intruders finally show themselves." it said, and unlike the other robots, it's voice had a modicum of human tone to it. "And one of the Chosen at that." If it realized what it was up against, it failed to show it. "Even if you defeat us here, human, you cannot possibly stop the full invasion. The shadow of our great Lord Giygas will stretch over all of this puny world." He lifted one tentacle arm to point at Poo and Dustin. "Get them!"

Dustin, petrified, shrunk back against the wall. The ten remaining starmen teleported forward, appearing in a scattered formation centered around Poo. Flipping his sword around behind his back, he shouted, "Dustin, stay down!"

A marked change came over the room in the next moment as the light fixture up above flickered. Some powerful force shook the floor subtly, and though he could only see Poo's back, Dustin knew it was coming from the prince. Feeling that something terrible was about to happen, Dustin flung himself flat on the ground.

The space around Poo distorted, then tore completely open like a crinkled piece of paper. Out of the void shot a wave of fiery white stars, spinning and spiraling madly as they went. With the sound that could only be described as the impact of celestial bodies, the starstorm tore through the ranks of starmen, completely obliterating some and tearing the rest into unrecognizable scrap. Those stars that missed their targets sailed to the fair corners of the room and exploded, showering white flame sparks in all directions. The reverberations continued even after the cosmic barrage had ended.

Through it all, the starman commander stood impassive. Dustin, his mind blown from the immensity of Poo's assault, noticed that a shimmer of air similar to the psychic shield that was protecting him surrounded the starman as well. '_All of that and he's still there? How can a robot even have psychic powers?_'

Not wasting any time, Poo crouched down and blasted forward at blinding speed. Before he could lay the final blow, however, a wave of fire sprang out of the ground and instantly engulfed him. "No!!" cried Dustin, a stab of terror rending his heart at the thought that his protector was destroyed. In the next moment, as the flames disappeared as suddenly as they had come, he was relieved to see Poo still standing, albeit his psychic shield destroyed under the force of the blast and his clothing singed around the edges.

Trying once more, Poo burst into motion and came at the starman in a dizzying zig-zag. Another wave of fire appeared at the robot's command, but this time Poo swept his hand in an arc and seemed to push the conflagration to one side like it was a puff of vapor. Leaping through the embers, he drove his weapon straight through the starman commander with a climactic rending of metal, burying it down to the hilt all in one smooth motion. Sparks flickered fitfully for a moment, then died. Poo tore his blade out of his enemy horizontally, creating a fatal gash of wires and machinery that fizzled and popped. The damage too much to bear, it crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Awed at this exchange of psychic power, Dustin sat up slightly from his prone position. The threat appeared to have passed, as the only sound now was the steady bass hum of the digging machine against the wall. Turning to it, the prince of Dalaam seemed to examine the machine for a moment, then leapt and plunged his sword into its electric organs. It gave a shudder, then the light emanating from its depths faded and the digging ceased. Turning from it, Poo walked over to Dustin and slumped down to sit there against the wall with a tired sigh.

"That was amazing." was all Dustin could muster after a moment of silence.

"In time, perhaps you will be able to achieve as much, Chosen One." Slumping against the wall next to Dustin, Poo laid his weapon down and let out a tired sigh. With the robot menace purged from Alphed, everything somehow seemed more serene, even this dank and forbidding cave. Beautiful silence reigned in the absence of the horrible machine and, inexplicably, Dustin saw a white butterfly drift across the the room in a lazy, glimmering line. Smiling slightly, he looked at the former member of the Chosen Four out of the corner of his eye. It was hard to believe how far things had come since he'd been awoken earlier in the night. And yet, in a way it wasn't surprising at all. The idea that he really was the Chosen One was starting to seem like less of an impossibility with every minute that passed.

The magic butterfly drifted aimlessly around the room, spreading serenity from it's tiny beating wings. Dustin held out a hand as it neared, and it landed carefully on his palm. Everything didn't seem so bad, and the future, while filled with dark, had its brief snatches of hope, sometimes in the most unexpected forms. This little manifestation of hope in Dustin's palm was enough to make him relax and close his eyes, trying to fathom what lay in store.


End file.
